Importers and Producers

Importer Spotlight: Rosenthal Wine Merchant

July 22, 2017 |
Brian Freedman

Few names in the world of wine are as instantly recognizable, and as intimately associated with quality, as Neal Rosenthal’s. For decades now, the Rosenthal team has worked tirelessly to bring to the United States the kind of wines that, for a generation, have shaped the way we drink here. Indeed, the sight of the Rosenthal Wine Merchant label on the back of a bottle of wine is, for many consumers and sommeliers, all the assurance they need that the wine inside is, as Rosenthal’s own materials point out, among “the finest examples of wine made in the classical western European tradition.”

What that means in practice is a portfolio of producers, now numbering a remarkable 100, that represents close to all of the viticultural areas of France, and wide swaths of places across Catalonia, Italy, and Switzerland. What ties them all together is that they’re crafted by hand, in often limited quantities, by people whose respect for and awe of the land comes through in every sip.

Beyond all of that, Rosenthal makes sure that every last one of its sales-staff members visits the producers themselves, the better to understand what goes into crafting such extraordinary wines. It’s not inexpensive to do this, but the Rosenthal team is so committed to telling the stories of each of their producers that it’s an investment worth making. Because in a world of ever-larger wineries, cranking out juice by the ton, the ones imported to the United States by Rosenthal Wine Merchant represent some of the best of the other side of that equation: Estate-bottled beauties, often made in small amounts, that could only have come from their unique, inimitable place or origin. No wonder the Rosenthal name has become so revered in the world of wine. It’s a reputation that’s been well-earned, year after year, since 1977, one producer and one bottle at a time.